First-look: openSUSE 11.2 is flexible, elegant

Novell announced today the official release of openSUSE 11.2, the latest version of the company's open source Linux distribution. The new version, which has been under development for almost a year, brings updated software a handful of noteworthy improvements.

openSUSE is one of the most popular Linux distributions. Although it doesn't match some of our other favorites in the area of usability, it offers a high level of refinement and plenty of flexibility for power users. Version 11.2 will strengthen the distro's long-standing reputation for delivering an unbeatable KDE experience. Its GNOME environment is strong too, and has a great selection of default applications.

The distribution is offered in several formats. You can get a full DVD image with a multitude of packages, or you can get a Live CD image for GNOME or KDE. I performed an installation with KDE from the DVD and also tested the GNOME Live CD.

Live CD installer

DVD installer

One of the changes in 11.2 is that KDE is now the default desktop environment in the DVD installer. The installer previously had no default and required the user to select which desktop environment they wanted to use during the installation process. Users can still select GNOME, but the KDE option is enabled by default.

Users and developers felt that requiring a manual decision was detrimental to usability. They wanted to avoid confronting new users with a seemingly arbitrary and intimidating choice. KDE was selected as the default on the basis of a poll which showed a strong preference for that desktop environment among openSUSE users. The outcome is unsurprising because SUSE has a long history of being a KDE-centric distribution prior to being acquired by Novell. You can learn more about openSUSE's desktop preference saga by perusing our previous coverage of the issue.

The KDE variant of openSUSE 11.2 comes with KDE 4.3, which was released in August. Although KDE 4 had a rough start, it's maturing nicely. The latest version feels great and addresses a number of weaknesses that afflicted its predecessor. Plasma got support for keyboard shortcuts and a number of other much-needed conveniences.

The openSUSE developers have finally adopted Firefox as the default browser for KDE in 11.2, displacing Konqueror. Clicking links in KDE applications will now consistently cause the URL to be loaded in Firefox.They have done a great job of integrating Firefox with the desktop and making it a first-class KDE citizen. Firefox's built-in RSS handler, for example, can be used to add feeds to Akregator. The browser itself still uses GTK+ theming APIs to render its widgets, but it does use KDE file dialogs and similar accoutrements of desktop integration. The developers chose to focus on Firefox integration because Konqueror simply doesn't work properly on a number of commonly-used websites.

The GNOME environment in openSUSE 11.2 is pretty slick. I've always been impressed with the high quality of openSUSE's GNOME theming, but it's even better than usual in this release. The new Sonar theme looks great and reflects the large amount of effort and professionalism that go into crafting openSUSE's distinctive look and feel. The only aesthetic weak area is the font rendering, which doesn't look as good out of the box as some other distros. I suspect that the issue relates to autohinting.

As usual, the openSUSE GNOME installation gives you great applications like Beagle and Banshee integrated tightly with the desktop right out of the box. The developers decided to stick with Pidgin instead of adopting GNOME's Empathy chat client. Empathy still has a lot of rough areas and is missing a number of significant features such as text formatting. We'll be looking at the problems with Empathy in great depth in an upcoming article.

I ran into a few minor issues during my tests, but no serious bugs. Like 11.1, the new version offers a pretty weak Compiz experience. I was never able to get Compiz working reliably with my Nvidia TwinView setup in 11.1. The same problem has unfortunately persisted in 11.2. What makes it especially puzzling is that Compiz works practically out of the box with Ubuntu on the same hardware and the same dual-monitor configuration.

In general, openSUSE lacks Ubuntu's it-just-works factor in many cases, but makes up for it by providing more flexibility under the hood and better packaging for certain kinds of development technologies, particularly Java and Mono. After conducting hands-on testing with openSUSE 11.2, my opinion of the distro has gone up another notch. It's a minor incremental improvement, but it's good progress in the right direction. The distro has a lot to offer and could be the best if the developers can smooth out some of the pain points and make it play nicer out of the box.